IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/indcch/v24y2015i1p163-190..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

A Model of corporate donations to open source under hardware–software complementarity

Author

Listed:
  • Luigi Di Gaetano

Abstract

In recent years there has been an increasing diffusion of open source projects as well as an increasing interest among scholars on the topic. Open source software (OSS) is developed by communities of programmers and users, usually sponsored by private firms, is available in the public domain and redistributed for free. We present a model of open and closed source software competition in a differentiated oligopoly of hardware–software bundles. Hardware and software are complement goods and OSS is financed by hardware firms. Results are several. Hardware firms contribute to the development of open source, although the level of contribution is not socially optimal. OSS availability has a positive impact on hardware firms’ profits and prices, whereas the closed source producer is harmed by OSS competition. Furthermore, we analyze under what circumstances hardware firms have incentives in investing in OS projects. The model can explain the increasing participation in OS projects of several embedded device producers and server producers. Although we focus on hardware, this model can be generalized to a wide range of complementary goods and services, such as IT training, web hosting, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) consultancy services.

Suggested Citation

  • Luigi Di Gaetano, 2015. "A Model of corporate donations to open source under hardware–software complementarity," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 24(1), pages 163-190.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:24:y:2015:i:1:p:163-190.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/icc/dtu010
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Some Simple Economics of Open Source," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 50(2), pages 197-234, June.
    2. Economides, Nicholas & Salop, Steven C, 1992. "Competition and Integration among Complements, and Network Market Structure," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 105-123, March.
    3. Josh Lerner & Jean Tirole, 2005. "The Economics of Technology Sharing: Open Source and Beyond," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(2), pages 99-120, Spring.
    4. Dalle, Jean-Michel & Jullien, Nicolas, 2003. "'Libre' software: turning fads into institutions?," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 32(1), pages 1-11, January.
    5. Jurgen Bitzer & Philipp Schroder, 2007. "Open Source Software, Competition and Innovation," Industry and Innovation, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 14(5), pages 461-476.
    6. Mustonen, Mikko, 2003. "Copyleft--the economics of Linux and other open source software," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 99-121, March.
    7. Nicholas Economides & Evangelos Katsamakas, 2006. "Two-Sided Competition of Proprietary vs. Open Source Technology Platforms and the Implications for the Software Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(7), pages 1057-1071, July.
    8. Schmidt, Klaus & Schnitzer, Monika, 2003. "Public Subsidies for Open Source? Some Economic Policy Issues of the Software Market," CEPR Discussion Papers 3793, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    9. Andreoni, James, 1990. "Impure Altruism and Donations to Public Goods: A Theory of Warm-Glow Giving?," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 100(401), pages 464-477, June.
    10. Cellini, Roberto & Lambertini, Luca & Ottaviano, Gianmarco I. P., 2004. "Welfare in a differentiated oligopoly with free entry: a cautionary note," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(2), pages 125-133, June.
    11. Bitzer, Jurgen, 2004. "Commercial versus open source software: the role of product heterogeneity in competition," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 369-381, December.
    12. Jay Pil Choi, 2008. "Mergers With Bundling In Complementary Markets," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(3), pages 553-577, September.
    13. Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Pankaj Ghemawat, 2006. "Dynamic Mixed Duopoly: A Model Motivated by Linux vs. Windows," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(7), pages 1072-1084, July.
    14. Lanzi, Diego, 2009. "Competition and open source with perfect software compatibility," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 192-200, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Knut Blind & Torben Schubert, 2024. "Estimating the GDP effect of Open Source Software and its complementarities with R&D and patents: evidence and policy implications," The Journal of Technology Transfer, Springer, vol. 49(2), pages 466-491, April.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Engelhardt, Sebastian v. & Freytag, Andreas, 2013. "Institutions, culture, and open source," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 95(C), pages 90-110.
    2. Llanes, Gastón & de Elejalde, Ramiro, 2013. "Industry equilibrium with open-source and proprietary firms," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 36-49.
    3. Thomas Christiaans, 2013. "On the Dynamics of Competition between Commercial and Free Software," Studies in Microeconomics, , vol. 1(1), pages 37-58, June.
    4. Gauguier, Jean-Jacques, 2009. "L’industrialisation de l’Open Source," Economics Thesis from University Paris Dauphine, Paris Dauphine University, number 123456789/4388 edited by Toledano, Joëlle.
    5. Eric Darmon & Dominique Torre, 2010. "Open source, dual licensing and software compétition," Post-Print halshs-00497623, HAL.
    6. Ramon Casadesus-Masanell & Gastón Llanes, 2011. "Mixed Source," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(7), pages 1212-1230, July.
    7. Nicholas Economides & Evangelos Katsamakas, 2005. "Linux vs. Windows: A Comparison of Innovation Incentives and a Case Study," Working Papers 05-11, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    8. Nicholas Economides & Evangelos Katsamakas, 2006. "Two-Sided Competition of Proprietary vs. Open Source Technology Platforms and the Implications for the Software Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(7), pages 1057-1071, July.
    9. Riccardo Leoncini & Francesco Rentocchini & Giuseppe Vittucci Marzetti, 2008. "You Won the Battle. What about the War? A Model of Competition between Proprietary and Open Source Software," Department of Economics Working Papers 0811, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
    10. Lanzi, Diego, 2009. "Competition and open source with perfect software compatibility," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 21(3), pages 192-200, August.
    11. Nicholas Economides & Evangelos Katsamakas, 2005. "Linux vs. Windows: A comparison of application and platform innovation incentives for open source and proprietary software platforms+," Working Papers 05-03, NET Institute, revised Sep 2005.
    12. Murat Yılmaz, 2022. "Coexistence of proprietary and open‐source firms under product differentiation," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(8), pages 4153-4166, December.
    13. F. Rullani & L. Zirulia, 2011. "A supply side story for a threshold model: Endogenous growth of the free and open source community," Working Papers wp781, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    14. Bitzer, Jürgen & Geishecker, Ingo, 2010. "Who contributes voluntarily to OSS? An investigation among German IT employees," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 165-172, February.
    15. Alexia Gaudeul, 2008. "Consumer Welfare and Market Structure in a Model of Competition between Open Source and Proprietary Software," Working Paper series, University of East Anglia, Centre for Competition Policy (CCP) 2008-31, Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK..
    16. Yu Wang & Yu Chen & Bonwoo Koo, 2017. "Open Source and Competition Strategy Under Network Effects," Graz Economics Papers 2017-03, University of Graz, Department of Economics.
    17. Cerquera Dussán, Daniel & Müller, Bettina, 2009. "Open Source, ICT infrastructure and firm performance," ZEW Discussion Papers 09-089, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    18. Caulkins, Jonathan P. & Feichtinger, Gustav & Grass, Dieter & Hartl, Richard F. & Kort, Peter M. & Seidl, Andrea, 2013. "When to make proprietary software open source," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1182-1194.
    19. Reisinger, Markus & Ressner, Ludwig & Schmidtke, Richard & Thomes, Tim Paul, 2014. "Crowding-in of complementary contributions to public goods: Firm investment into open source software," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 78-94.
    20. Susan Athey & Glenn Ellison, 2014. "Dynamics of Open Source Movements," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 23(2), pages 294-316, June.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D21 - Microeconomics - - Production and Organizations - - - Firm Behavior: Theory
    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms
    • L17 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Open Source Products and Markets
    • D43 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Oligopoly and Other Forms of Market Imperfection

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:indcch:v:24:y:2015:i:1:p:163-190.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/icc .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.